Transcript

Okay, we going?

All right, welcome back.

We are now moving from the first century into the second century.

So we started in the Apostolic Age, or the age of the Apostles.

Now we're moving into what we call Sub-Apostolic Age, or sort of Christianity, the next generation, right?

So this is the age after the Apostles, and so we're getting into the end of the first century Now, really there's some overlap here because I'm going to start with Clement of Rome.

And Clement of Rome lived from about the year 30 to 100. Now, whenever you see me write a name here, Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

Music will be omitted.

According to the story, Clement is supposed to have known some of the apostles personally.

In fact, in Philippians, there is the mention of a Clement, and so the tradition is that he seems to have known Paul and possibly Luke personally, and perhaps The Clement mentioned in Philippians is this particular Clement, although there's no way to prove that.

Some other sources say that Clement was a disciple of Peter.

That probably comes from the fact that he's in Rome, and Peter was known to have been in Rome.

Other traditions associate him with the household of a man named Clement, And Clemens was actually a cousin of one of the Roman emperors, the emperor Domitian.

Domitian was emperor of Rome from 81 to 96 in the first century.

By the way, you may be used to AD, or Anno Domini, the Year of the Lord.

The more common convention nowadays is CE, or the Common Era, and that's simply to acknowledge the fact that not everyone thinks Jesus is Lord.

So we'll use CE for the common error.

Usually I will use CE, but it means exactly the same thing as AD. You should get in the habit of using CE as well, because all of publishing is going in that direction.

Instead of BC, we now use BCE for before the common error.

So anyway, most of what we're talking about in this class, though, is AE or CE. Domitian was the emperor, Clemens was his cousin, and Clemens and his wife were executed by the emperor Domitian, and many people believe it was because they were Christians.

Our Clemens, according to tradition, may have been a slave in the Clemens household, and as often happened, when the master dies, And the master's will provides for the manumission of the slaves.

Often the slaves will take the name of the household that they came from.

So it could be that Clemens of Rome was a freedman or a former slave of the Clemens household and took the Clemens name when he was free.

However, the interesting thing about that is that if that's true, you do the math, It turns out he was already a bishop before he was a priest, so he was a bishop while he was a slave, which is part of the whole bigger picture that slavery in the ancient world is not the same thing as it was in this country.

But anyway, all of these things are traditions.

Whenever I say according to tradition, That's code for, you know, this is a story, but it's a story.

So, you know, we can't necessarily verify that it's true.

And in fact, there may very well be competing stories, as there often are.

So it seems like this.

When I say, according to tradition, this happened or that happened, you know you can take it with a grain of salt.

I'm not saying it didn't happen.

But we can't verify that it did as well.

So that's kind of the way we'll talk about things.

Now, Clement is known as the fourth Bishop of Rome.

He was Bishop of Rome from 88 to 97. Now, I know what you're thinking.

What's a bishop?

We'll get to that in a minute.

What does it mean to be a bishop?

Don't worry, we'll get to that.

I just want to give you a little background on Clement first before we get into that.

So, he's known as the fourth bishop of Rome, but that assumes that you're counting Peter as the first bishop of Rome.

You may know that Peter is given the honorary title of first bishop of Rome.

So, counting Peter as the first, Clement would be the fourth.

Now, according to the story, He was banished by the Emperor in the year 97, but you'll notice he lived a few extra years, so he was exiled.

And the legend is that he was martyred because he was sent into exile, but in his exile he performed miracles and converted so many people that this legend is martyrdom.

He was thrown into the Black Sea, tied to an anchor.

But the story doesn't end there.

In the 9th century, his body was found by Saint Cyril, who, you know, was told in a dream or whatever, and that's how it always happens, where to find the body.

Found the body and the anchor, and brought the body to Rome, and he was buried In the church that now bears his name, in the city of Rome, the church of San Clemente, and in fact Cyril died while in Rome, and so St. Cyril is buried there too.

And if you come to Rome with me, we will go to San Clemente and we will see that place.

But that's the story of Clement.

Now, the document that I'm going to talk about, do you have a question?

Yeah, when you say he was banished by the emperor?

Not this emperor.

It was the emperor, Trajan.

Different emperor.

Alright.

I'm going to talk about a document called First Clement, but I don't think it's on the reading list.

First Clement, are they reading First Clement?

You have it as supplemental, but there's a link on the...

Okay.

So I don't think it's... it's under required reading, but we'll get to that in a minute.

So what does it mean when we say Clemens was the bishop of Rome?

What does it mean to be a bishop at the end of the first century?

In some cases, when the church in any given city was founded or started by an apostle, that apostle sort of by default becomes What we might consider the bishop there because he has authority over any church leader that he would have appointed.

So in the case of the churches that were founded or that Paul was working with, Paul sort of functions as a bishop in that sense, and he appointed others to work in the local churches when he couldn't be there.

And we have a similar situation going on actually in the book of Revelation.

The author of the book of Revelation, we'll call him John, is sort of an overseer over the churches of what is now Turkey.

And so in those cases, the Apostles appointed their own successors in many ways.

And so we have that, and we have this tradition of the Apostles being sort of itinerant overseers over a group of churches or an area.

But also there are plenty of churches that started in areas maybe that weren't founded by an Apostle.

And so, in those cases, the office of bishop may have evolved similar to what I was telling you before.

When you have only a handful of Christians in a whole city, they can all meet in one house.

But as soon as you have multiple house churches meeting in one city, then the local leaders of those house churches, the pastors, have to sort of Meet periodically so that they can compare notes and stay on the same page.

So as soon as you have multiple house churches in a city, you have a council of priests.

You have a council of pastors who are meeting to compare notes.

As soon as you have a council, the council needs a secretary.

I mean, eventually somebody's going to say, See, we better write down whatever we decide here.

Bob, would you take the minutes, you know?

And Bob, okay, fine, so Bob takes minutes.

And so somebody becomes a kind of secretary for the council.

And eventually, if the Christians in one city want to write a letter to the Christians in another city, who are they going to get to write that letter?

Bob, would you write the letter?

Okay, Bob writes the letter.

So now you see, the office, it isn't even an office in the beginning, it's just, hey, would you do this, sort of evolves into an office that is like a secretary of the Council of Priests.

And it is this person who would write a letter on behalf of the Christians in that city, and who would speak for the church of that city.

And in effect, This is what Clement of Rome does when he writes a document on behalf of the Christians in Rome.

He writes a letter to the Christians in Corinth.

Same city that Paul wrote 1st and 2nd Corinthians to, right?

But it's not called 3rd Corinthians or anything.

It's called 1st Clement, because it's the first letter that we know of that we have written by Clement of Rome.

By the way, there is a 2nd Clement but almost certainly not written by the same person, so don't worry about that.

But the point is, is that someone fulfills this role of speaking on behalf of the church in a certain city.

Now, at some point, towards the end of the first century, beginning of the second century, we see an evolution, though, where it's not simply that someone is speaking for the church and the council of priests says, hey Bob, will you write this letter, tell them this and that, and then Bob writes the letter.

And we see a shift from the council tells the spokesperson what to say, it shifts to now this person starts telling the rest of the council what to say and do.

And this person, you know, again based on the idea that Every area or group or city of churches has to have an overseer.

This person becomes the authority over the rest of the council.

It's not always clear how that happens, and it's certainly not clear that it happens the same way in each place.

But by the time we see Clemens holding this office in the city of Rome, he is more than simply the secretary of the council.

He is more than simply the guy who's taking the minutes and writing the letters.

He does write a letter.

He writes on behalf of the Christians in Rome, but he writes with authority.

And it's interesting because already by this time, he holds an office that has authority not only over the other priests or pastors in the city of Rome, but he writes with authority as if he has authority even over the Christians in another city.

He writes this letter to the Christians in Corinth as though they ought to listen to him.

And we'll talk about why in a minute.

But let me tell you a little bit about the letter.

Apparently there were some divisions in the church of Corinth.

Divisions not too dissimilar from divisions we already see in the Pauline correspondence with Corinth.

In Paul's letters to the Corinthians, there are these issues of rich and poor, philosophical and whatever the opposite of that is.

We see these divisions in the church, and some of those divisions are still there at the time that Clement is writing to the same church, now, what, 40 years later?

Yeah, 40, 45 years later, something like that.

So, apparently, what's going on, and it's very difficult to tell because Clement doesn't really go into the details of what the issue is, but there's some division and there's some factioning going on in the Church of Corinth, and it seems to be over authority in the Church of Corinth.

Perhaps it's over who ought to fulfill the same role in the Church of Corinth that Clement fulfills in Rome.

There also seems to be a generational issue going on.

In other words, the older Christians are opposing the younger Christians in Corinth.

So it could be that the older Christians are perhaps arguing for, wait a minute, this person's only supposed to be the secretary of the council, and the younger Christians are arguing for a more evolved hierarchy.

It's unclear.

Maybe it's the other way around.

I mean, who knows?

But we have some of these divisions going on.

And so Clement writes this letter on behalf of the Christians of Rome, but he writes it with this authority.

And by the way, the letter is written at almost exactly the same time as the writing of the book of Revelation.

If you've ever read the book of Revelation, it's very symbolic and difficult to interpret.

This letter is not like that at all.

This is very practical.

He sort of goes on and on about things without ever really getting to the point.

Which, you know, you can see why I didn't make it into the Bible anyway.

But it was written about the same time, right around the year 95. Maybe, I think, a little bit earlier, because the book of Revelation is written during a persecution under the emperor Domitian.

And Clement has a section where he He's still willing to talk about the Roman emperors as appointed by God, we should pray for them and stuff.

So it seems like the persecution, that particular persecution hasn't broken out yet when Clement is writing.

And so he's willing to pray for government leaders and describe them in positive terms that Doesn't seem like he would if the persecution had started in 95. So, maybe 1 Clement is written a little earlier than Revelation.

But at any rate, 1 Clement is very different in tone.

It's not apocalyptic, it's not symbolic, it's not theological.

It is a very practical letter, and it conforms to an ancient form of a sort of negotiation or peacekeeping letter.

And so what he says is, He's going to send some negotiators from Rome to help the Corinthians sort out their dispute.

So he never really says exactly what the dispute is because he sort of says, well, you know, these delegates will sort that out.

But the bigger picture problem for Clement is that the disputes are embarrassing the church.

So we've got to cut it out with the internal disputes because It's an embarrassment to the church and it's causing some to doubt the faith and it's hurting the cause of spreading the gospel.

So that's what the letter is about, in case you don't read it.

But what's really significant here is the tone and the assumption behind the letter.

Because someone who is not an apostle is writing to a church That is not their church, and assumes the authority to tell them what to do.

And in fact, the assumption that Clement is working with here is that because he is writing as the person who functions as the bishop of Rome, that he has some authority over the other church.

Because who was the first bishop of Rome?

Who was bishop of Rome before him?

Peter.

And so, we're going to talk about this in a minute, but the assumption here is that whatever the fourth bishop of Rome says is obviously consistent with what the third bishop of Rome said, which is consistent with what the second bishop of Rome said, which is consistent with what the first bishop of Rome said, who was Peter.

And so the point here is that what Clement says ultimately comes from Peter.

That's the assumption.

What Clement says ultimately comes from Peter.

Because he wouldn't make up anything new.

He even implies at one point that this very letter may be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

And so his authority His authority for being able to write this letter and give advice to the Corinthians and tell them what to do and speak to them almost in a parental sort of tone, his authority comes from the fact that he is the successor to the same office that Peter held in Rome.

And that concept of The bishop being the successor of the original bishop in any given city is called apostolic succession.

And in this letter of 1st Clement is where we begin to see this concept of apostolic succession played out in youth.

The idea is this.

that there is a direct and unbroken chain or line from the apostles to the bishops.

Because in every case, the bishop is the overseer of the churches of a city or an area.

And before that person held that position, someone else held that position.

And before that person, someone else going back to an apostle.

So the idea is that each bishop ought to be able to trace his pedigree back to an apostle.

Which means that whatever any given bishop teaches is supported by the idea that that teaching goes back to an apostle.

This idea of apostolic succession is going to be picked up by one of our early theologians, Irenaeus.

You'll read him later.

But he's going to flesh it out.

But we already see it in 1st Clement.

Another way to look at it is that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are sort of passed down by consecration.

And so as each new generation of church leaders is commissioned and consecrated, the mantle of authority, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are passed down from one generation of church leaders to the next.

Which means that what they teach is trustworthy because if you back up through that chain of consecration, you back up all the way to the Apostles and then through them to Jesus Himself.

So, the bishops are the successors of the apostles.

Therefore, they ought to be obeyed as one would obey an apostle, as one would obey Peter or Paul.

Now, one of the things you have to keep in mind is that in the worldview of the early church, and for that matter, the ancient world in general, newer is not necessarily better.

We were just having a conversation during the break about the mighty Atari ST computer.

It was my first computer, had no hard drive, everything you had to store you had to put on one three and a half inch stick.

But that was pretty much the best computer, it was as good as a Mac back then.

Now, let's say you needed a new computer, and I said, well gee, I have two computers.

You can have one of them.

One's a brand new Apple, and the other is an Atari SP from 1986. Which one do you want?

Now, you being the humble Christian that you are would probably take the Atari, but that's not the point.

The point is you would want the new one, because when it comes to technology, obviously newer is better, right?

But their world is not a world of technology.

Their world is a world of tradition.

Newer is not better.

In fact, older is better.

Because what is older is that which has stood the test of time.

And so it's more trustworthy.

The old stuff is more trustworthy.

The new stuff is therefore automatically suspect.

So if you think about that in terms of theology, what that means is that the apostles were the first authority.

They knew Jesus personally.

So, in the mind of the early Christians, there's no possible way that an Apostle could be wrong about anything.

But, the point is that the Apostles were automatically right.

They represent the beginning of the tradition.

They represent the oldest tradition.

So, an early Christian theologian would never want to Have anybody think they were coming up with anything new?

If they said something new, it was only because they were finding a new way to clarify the old tradition.

So, the apostles represent the traditions, and they taught the first generation of church leaders after them, the people that they themselves chose and commissioned and appointed.

And that generation of church leaders taught the next generation of church leaders.

And so the idea is that What's being taught by a bishop in any given city is assumed to be consistent with what had been taught by the church leaders in every generation from the apostles.

So if any new idea comes up, you better be able to show that it's consistent with the old ideas or it's automatically suspect and maybe it's heresy.

You're going to read the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and I'll talk about him in a few minutes, but when talking about this idea of apostolic succession and the trustworthiness of the teaching of the church based on this concept, he used a word to talk about the theology that the apostles taught and that From them the whole church everywhere teaches.

He used the word to talk about the universal church and what it teaches universally.

This is Ignatius of Antioch.

And the word is a word that means more or less universal.

The word is Catholic.

Catholic with a small c, as you know from the asterisk at the bottom of the Nicene Creed, right?

But the point here is that, yes, we know the word Catholic originally means universal, so the Catholic Church is a universal church.

But the point of using that word is exactly because it's not necessarily true that everybody taught the same thing and everybody believed the same thing.

In other words, when confronted with alternative interpretations, alternative teaching, when confronted with those extremes, someone like Ignatius is going to say, well, that's not what the Catholic Church teaches, that's not what's been taught by the Universal Church since the Apostles, that's something else.

And so the word Catholic, while it means universal, it's originally used to say, well, this is Catholic, and that's not.

This is Catholic, and that's not.

What is meant by that is, this is Orthodox, this is correct, this is the mainstream church, this is the majority, and those other things are not.

And so, you know, what is Catholic, then, is what is believed or shared by all Christians worldwide.

But again, that sort of begs the question, you know, the words used to exclude those those interpretations that are on the extreme that diverge off from the mainstream.

That's why they're called heresies.

Again, the point of all this is for the sake of unity.

In fact, Ignatius himself will say, I am a man set on unity.

It's all about keeping the Church one.

Jesus prayed that all of his followers would be one.

Paul talks about one faith, one baptism.

The unity of the church is extremely important, and that's what's going on here, because if unity isn't maintained, then there's no longer one church.

So, eventually the word orthodox will also be used in the same way, to say that which the mainstream or the majority church teaches as opposed to heresy, and then heresy is whatever does not agree with the tradition, whatever diverges off from the older teaching, the apostolic teaching, the teaching that was handed down from the apostles and then through each successive generation of bishops.

And this was meant to guarantee uniformity of teaching and therefore the unity of the church.

We have this apostolic teaching.

It's passed down from generation to generation through the apostolic succession, through the succession of bishops.

And anything that is not consistent with that or doesn't agree with that is therefore considered heresy.

Now remember, we're still at the tail end of the first century here.

And then, you know, working within the next half hour, we'll get into the beginning of the second century.

There is no consensus on a Christian New Testament yet.

We have these apostolic documents floating around, but at best they're being passed around in collections.

Somebody's got Paul's letters, somebody's got the four Gospels, whatever.

At this point we're not even sure if all of the 95 The book of Revelation is just being written, and that's if you accept an early date from Revelation.

Which I do.

But the point is that we're not even sure that we're done writing apostolic documents yet, right?

So there's no Christian New Testament yet, per se.

The documents are there for the most part, but there's no consensus on which documents ought to be in the Christian Bible.

We're going to talk about that probably next week.

But the point is that if you don't have a New Testament yet, How do you know what the Church teaches and what Christians believe?

How do you know which interpretations of the life and ministry of Jesus are correct?

Well, the way you know what teachings are correct is by listening to your bishop.

So as the office of bishop emerges, it becomes the teaching authority in the Church.

A teaching authority that's seen as, again, the successor backing up through the generations to the apostles.

So any city church, in other words, any group of house churches in a given city, can trace the succession of its own bishop back, and many of them can trace it back to an apostle.

Now again, some of these Apostolic Foundings of Churches are maybe somewhat legendary, but be that as it may, the point is that it was understood that if you could trace the succession of your bishop back to an apostle, that was taken as a sign of the trustworthiness of the teaching of the present bishop.

Even though we acknowledge, we know now that the office of bishop sort of evolves in most cases, but the point is that every church, and especially every major city church, would have a sort of pedigree or succession of the bishops, going back to the apostle who is supposed to have founded that church.

And in the case of Rome, the apostle who is supposed to have founded the church is Peter.

Now, even though we have no evidence Peter founded the church in Rome.

In all probability, there were Christians in Rome before Peter ever got there.

Still, Peter's presence there gives him a sort of authority in that church.

He is the apostle associated with Rome.

Even though Paul gets there eventually too, and both Peter and Paul are martyred in Rome, And of course, if you go to Rome today, you will see the presence of both Peter and Paul, but Peter is the one who's sort of taken as the original apostle authority over the Church of Rome, so he's given this honorary title of the first bishop of Rome, which means that every successive bishop of Rome is the successor to Peter in that office.

So imagine If there's a dispute over the interpretation of a particular passage of scripture or over a certain doctrine.

If two Christians disagree, they go to their bishops.

If two bishops disagree, then what do you do?

Well, if two bishops disagree, then each bishop is going to pull out the succession list.

Well, you know, I was consecrated, or I learned from the previous bishop who learned from the previous bishop, Going all the way back to this apostle.

And the other bishop's going to say, well, I learned from, you know, going back to this apostle.

And in many cases, if both churches, you know, maybe only one church could claim succession back to an apostle and the other one could not, well, if you could claim succession back to an apostle, you sort of win.

You know, I mean, that trumps, an apostle trumps no apostle, right?

But, if both churches could claim succession going back to an apostle, Then what do you do?

And we're going to talk about this throughout the course of this class because the authority of the Bishop of Rome evolves.

We're going to talk about that evolution over time.

But you know where it ends up.

It ends up with the papacy.

The Pope is the Bishop of Rome.

The Bishop of Rome is the Pope.

And so that office evolves.

And you will see over the course of this class how that evolves, and how the authority of the bishop of Rome increases.

But even from the very beginning, when it comes to the apostles, Peter trumps all the other apostles, because he is the one to whom Jesus said, you know, you are the rock, and on this rock I'm going to build my church.

Now, granted, you can interpret that passage to understand it in such a way that Jesus is not talking to Peter alone, that he's talking to all the apostles.

Or you can interpret that passage to say that the rock he's talking about is Peter's confession to faith, as opposed to Peter himself.

And that's all well and good.

But again, then Jesus goes on to give Peter the authority of the keys.

What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

What you release on earth will be released in heaven.

This is understood as the authority to forgive sins or not forgive sins.

Right?

And again, this can be understood as an authority given to all the apostles.

But the point is that from the beginning of the church's history, Peter was understood to be Jesus' right hand man, and the one to whom he gave this authority, and the one to whom he gave the authority to look after the other apostles when Jesus himself would be gone.

Peter, do you love me?

Then feed my sheep.

So, in other words, the point is that Peter is seen as sort of the head apostle.

I saw a hand in the back.

Yeah, go ahead.

Quick question.

In the event that two bishops can both trace apostolic succession back to Peter, what would happen?

Well, and that is the case in some cases, and so the dispute would go on.

Eventually, we're going to have to resort to councils to sort out some of these questions.

And so, the two, I believe Antioch also traces its succession back to Peter, but because Rome and Antioch are far enough apart, There's a bit of a rivalry there, we'll get into that more, but for the most part, Antioch also has another rival in Alexandria, and their powers sort of cancel each other out.

So, because there are more metropolitan cities in the east, that sort of adds to the authority of Rome in the west.

We'll talk more about this, But there's a lot of factors that feed into the increasing authority of the bishop of Rome.

Alright, so you get the idea then that this apostolic succession is the way that the early Christians would sort of test theology or would know how to trust what was being taught even before the church had a New Testament.

But also, you can probably see that this apostolic succession requires a certain institutionalization of the church.

In other words, to say that some teaching is approved and other teaching is not, you sort of have to separate out who are the approved teachers and who are the teachers who are not approved, And therefore, from the beginning, there is a connection, an interdependence, between authority and unity.

Now, some of us are taught to believe that authority and hierarchy are automatically bad.

But what you have to understand is that without authority and hierarchy, there is no unity.

Without authority, there is no unity.

This works not only within the church, but when we start talking about the Trinity, it works within the Trinity too.

Without hierarchy, there's no unity.

I know you don't, you know, put that, tuck that in the back of your mind.

It doesn't make sense yet, but it will.

So, anyway, two things happen then by the end of the first century to move along the evolution of the church's hierarchy.

Two things happened.

The first thing that happened is the apostles all died off.

The last one seems to have been John.

But again, right around the end of the first century, the church loses him as well.

So eventually, by the second century, all the apostles are gone.

The other thing that happened is that the church rose.

So that now, in most cities, You will have multiple house churches within a city.

Either all the Christians can't fit in one house, or you have house churches divided by region, by language, or by social status.

And so in a lot of the cities you have multiple house churches.

Where there are multiple house churches, the leaders, the pastors of the individual house churches have to meet.

And then you have a council.

Where you have a council, you have to have a chair of the council.

And eventually, as I said earlier, this evolves into the office of bishop.

And so by the time we get into the second century, and really already at the end of the first century we see this in Rome with Clement, the office of bishop is evolving to the point where the bishop is an overseer.

who has authority over the teaching of the church and over the sacraments of the church.

You're going to see this when you read the letters of Ignatius too, because Ignatius is going to argue for the limitation of one bishop per city.

So instead of having multiple overseers in different parts of the city or multiple schools of thought going on, Ignatius instinctively knew that that would lead to schism, that would lead to division.

If you have two bishops in one city, what's going to happen if they disagree?

If they have a disagreement, that automatically forces every Christian in that city to choose between them.

And now you don't have one church anymore, you have two churches.

Not only that, if you're excommunicated by Bishop A, and there's another bishop in town, you just go over to that bishop and get your communion over there.

And so excommunication loses its power as a method of discipline.

So the bishops have to support each other and they have to stay out of each other's way.

Ignatius argues for the limitation of only one bishop per city.

So we see this shift.

On some level there's a shift from the office as going from the secretary of the council to the chair of the council.

from the council directs someone to speak for them to this person now has authority over the council.

And so we have a shift in the hierarchy of the church.

At the time of the Didache, we had three levels of clergy.

We had Apostle, who was also called prophet, but this person was itinerant.

We had local pastors who could be called bishops or priests.

The Greek word for bishop is episkopos, where we get our word episcopal.

It means overseer.

The Greek word for priest is presbyter.

Most tend to translate that as elder, although the term elder can mean other things too, so I kind of avoid that, but that's what that is.

And then you have deacon, right?

So those are your levels of church authority.

By the time we get to the end of the first century and into the second century, these two titles split out and become two different levels.

With the Apostles gone, the title Bishop fills in that void.

So now the bishops are truly overseers over cities or areas.

They're not necessarily itinerant.

They may in fact be local pastors, but they have authority over the others.

And then you have the priests, who are the presbyters or the local pastors.

Remember, A bishop is also a presider, or an elder.

And so, if one goes from the level of priest and then becomes consecrated as bishop, one does not cease being a priest.

Right?

So, bishops are always priests.

And then, of course, you still have the deacons.

So, you know, all that is to say that, you know, this kind of thing happens when these guys go away.

Right?

Does that make sense?

Okay, any questions so far?

What was the role of a deacon?

Well, that's a good question.

It's not only uniform, because at the beginning, depending on time and place, the bishops, as I said, have the authority over the teaching of the church and over the sacraments.

So often, weekly worship or Sunday morning worship might have been held and led by a presider or an elder or a presider, but then the Eucharist was only presided over by the bishops.

So in some cases, only the bishops were presiding over the sacrament of the Eucharist.

In other cases, that authority was given to All that is to say that the deacon's role was originally a role of assisting in the sacraments.

Depending on who was doing the sacraments, the deacons were assisting those people.

You might find the deacons assisting priests in the sacraments, but you also might find the deacons as the assistants to the bishops.

It almost seems weird when you read it like you'd be reading about a bishop and the bishop's assistant is a deacon.

You'd think hierarchically, wait a minute, why shouldn't the priest be in there somewhere?

But it doesn't always work that way.

So the deacons were meant to assist primarily with the sacraments.

There were also deaconesses who assisted with baptism.

In the case of the baptism of women, when baptism was done naked, A male bishop would be on the other side of a curtain, and a female deacon or deaconess would assist the person going through the immersion in the baptism.

So there's that.

The deacons then also assist the bishops with things like the distribution of money.

So if people give their offering and that money is meant to go to the poor, The bishops will say, okay, well, we know who the poor people are.

They'll give the money to the deacons.

Here's your list of people.

Go and distribute the money to these people, or whatever.

And they might also distribute sacramental elements to people who could not be there for the sacrament as well.

So that's kind of what they did.

Question here?

You mentioned an itinerant.

What does that word mean?

What was the word?

Itinerant.

Oh, itinerant.

United Methodists know what itinerant means.

Itinerant means you move around.

So if you think about the Apostle Paul moving around a lot, that's itinerant.

He didn't stay in one place.

Yeah, good question.

Anything else?

Alright then, for the last ten minutes or so, I want to give you a little bit of an intro to Ignatius of Antioch.

You are going to read his letters.

Ignatius of Antioch.

So, Antioch is one of the larger cities in the east, in Syria.

You can look on the map to see where it is exactly.

But Ignatius of Antioch was the bishop and was arrested and sentenced to death, to execution, For his faith as part of the persecutions that were going on.

But he was sent back to Rome for his execution.

So in about the year 110 or so, he is on his way, being taken as a prisoner from Antioch in the east to Rome to face his execution.

And it's on the way that he writes these letters.

So, he was martyred about 110. He was probably born somewhere around the year 50, somewhere around the year 50, and martyred around the year 110. Like Clement of Rome, Ignatius is also said to have known one or more of the apostles personally.

According to tradition, he may have been a disciple of the Apostle John, along with another early church writer known as Colleen Carter.

So what we're seeing here are, again, the second generation of church leaders after the Apostles.

Question, go ahead.

If Peter was said to have started the church in Antioch, why would Ignatius be relieved and learn from John?

Oh, well, simply because he knew John and was a disciple of John.

But, to your point, in the apostolic succession, he would trace his succession back to Peter.

So he would have, you know, he, now I can't remember off the top of my head How many bishops there were supposedly before him.

But the idea is that, you know, maybe only two or something.

The point is that he would have learned both from John the Apostle and from the previous bishop in Antioch.

Who would have learned?

Yeah, right, exactly, exactly.

And, you know, we're going to see, I don't know if I'll remember to mention it or not, but when you get to the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century, One of the canons or rules that the Council of Nicaea will make is that bishops are not to translate.

Now that doesn't mean anything about language.

It means they're not to move from one city to another.

So they're trying to enforce the idea that if you're going to be bishop, you're going to be a bishop in the city you grew up in because that's how you preserve that apostolic succession.

That's how you preserve the teaching.

You theoretically should be a bishop in the same city where you learned Theology from a previous bishop.

Now, again, 10 minutes after the council, somebody's going to break that rule, but at least that was the idea, you know?

Yes?

Was only a bishop having bishops to die, or was there another day?

Usually, bishops is an office held for life.

Now, again, back in the early days, when it was just, Bob, will you take a minute?

Who knows?

But once it becomes a true office of the church, certainly by the second century already, bishop is an office held for life, and the only way you would become not bishop anymore is if you die, or if you're, like in the case of Clement, he was exiled, so he couldn't fulfill that role anymore, so he was replaced There will be cases where a bishop is charged with heresy and removed from the office.

Ignatius was arrested during a time of persecution.

He's on his way to Rome as a prisoner to be executed.

He briefly stayed with his friend Polycarp, In the city of Smyrna, and was able to, very much like Paul, you know, sort of under a kind of loose house arrest where he's able to meet with Christians.

And then as he travels on toward Rome, he writes these letters to people he met along the way or to churches.

And so you're going to read some of these letters.

He also writes on ahead to the Christians in Rome.

It's very interesting, his letter to the Romans, because he hasn't been there yet.

But one of the things he says is that he's on his way to be martyred, but he knows that the Christians of Rome apparently have enough influence to either rescue him or get him acquitted.

But he says, don't do that.

He says, Leave it alone.

This has to happen.

And one of the reasons I think he does that is because he has been arrested and sentenced to death for his faith.

And normally, there was only one way, but a very easy way, to get out from under that condemnation in the Roman Empire.

If you're condemned to death for your faith, all you have to do is renounce the faith.

Very easy.

The problem is, if Ignatius shows up alive later, goes home and doesn't get executed, that's exactly what people will think he did.

And so he can't really afford to have people think that he's renounced the faith.

So he has to see it through.

And he even says, even if it sounds like I changed my mind when I get there, don't listen to me then, listen to me now.

It's like young Frankenstein, he says, No matter how much I scream, don't open this door.

So there's that.

It's very interesting.

It's also interesting that Ignatius, like Clement, writes with a certain authority.

But unlike Clement, it's not the authority of apostolic succession that he's claiming.

Though he could claim apostolic succession, he is claiming a different kind of authority.

He's claiming the authority of a confessor.

A confessor is someone who has confessed their faith to the authorities at the risk of their own life.

And so, because he's done this, and because he's been condemned to execution, he is, in fact, claiming the authority of a martyr before his martyrdom.

And so on the one hand, he writes with a humble attitude, where he says, I'm only beginning to be a disciple, but my martyrdom will complete my discipleship.

On the other hand, he will give advice.

And strongly, when he gets to the part about there should be only one bishop per city, he's very passionate about that.

So, on the one hand, in his letter to the Ephesians, he says, I am not commanding you as though I were someone important.

Or, in another letter, he says, I do not think myself qualified as though I were an apostle.

Still, on the other hand, he argues for his point of view very strongly, and with an assumed authority that people should listen to him.

There should be only one bishop per city, and don't listen to those Docetics, because Jesus really wasn't human.

And in fact, it appears the Docetics were having separate meetings, and he argues that any meeting without the sanction of the bishops is not a church meeting, it's not the church.

Because again, he's all about the unity.

So you will see this anti-Docetic argument through his letters.

And against the Docetic, he argues for the real humanity of Jesus.

And you'll see that argument too, talking about how Christ's humanity is proven by his suffering, and by the fact that his body suffered, his body was nailed to the cross, his body died, and his body was raised.

So you see an argument for a real bodily resurrection, As a part of the Christian belief in the true humanity of Jesus.

Obviously also things like he ate and drank and stuff like that are all evidence of his humanity.

So you're going to see already in Ignatius' letters the affirmation of the two natures of Christ.

that he is both human and divine, because while he goes on at length to argue for the real humanity of Christ against the docetics, he will also argue for the divinity of Christ.

And he flat out calls Jesus God.

Now, part of what's going on here is that the emperors are claiming divine titles for themselves.

Remember that.

When you read the stuff about the persecutions, I kind of go through that.

But the early Roman emperors, kind of following an Egyptian trend, would be deified after their death.

They'd be proclaimed gods by the sense.

But it doesn't take too long for an emperor to say, well, if I'm the son or the adopted son of the previous emperor, and he's A god now, because he's dead, would that make me a son of a god?

And so, you know, when Jesus is called the son of God, or when Jesus is called divine, this is not just a theological statement, it's a political statement too, because the Christians are saying Jesus Christ is God, not that guy on the throne in Rome, or wherever he is.

Jesus is the son of God, not the guy who spells himself the emperor.

And this is exactly the kind of thing that gets them in trouble and gets them executed.

But again, this is Ignatius arguing for both of the two natures of Christ, the humanity and the divinity.

In fact, because the Docetics did not believe in the humanity of Christ, it appears that they were having a separate meeting with a different Eucharist, where instead of wine, They used water.

Because if Jesus wasn't human, he didn't have any blood, so they didn't use wine in their Eucharist, they used water.

And we refer to this as Aquarianism, using water.

But again, this just becomes an issue for Ignatius because they're having separate meetings.

Meetings that are not sanctioned by the bishop.

Meetings that are not under the authority of the bishop.

And this is exactly why the bishop Retain the authority over the sacraments.

Because the way you do the sacraments says something about your Christology.

And your Christology says something about your soteriology, or what you believe about salvation.

And remember, it's all about salvation.

Because the argument from the mainstream church was that, remember, a human-only Jesus can't save, and a divine-only Jesus can't save.

Salvation requires the two natures.

Salvation requires that the Savior be both divine and human.

Now, one more thing I want to point out, in case you missed it, and that is that heresy is not another religion.

Heresy is something going on within the Church.

If it wasn't within the Church, it would just be paganism.

But because it's within the Church, it's an issue.

And again, the heretics are not simply people who believe something different or even believe something wrong.

The heretics are the ones who teach it.

In other words, if I lived in the early church and I said, well, I don't think Jesus was divine, my bishop might say, well, that's not the teaching of the church.

We don't agree with that.

Please shut up about that.

Please think about what you're saying.

you know, listen to your authorities, get on board.

But, you know, it wouldn't be like I'd necessarily be excommunicated or anything.

But if I go around teaching that, now I'm a heretic, and now I'm going to be excommunicated if I don't stop teaching it.

If I'm confronted and they say, you know what, that's not the teaching of the Church, stop teaching that, and I say, no, this is what I believe, I'm going to teach it anyway, well, that's when it becomes a problem.

Why?

Because in the eyes of the mainstream church, I'm leading people astray.

The heretic leads the Christians who don't know any better, maybe, astray and away from salvation.

Question?

Were the Orthodox leaders of the early church putting heretics to death at this point?

No. Good question.

When we talk about heretics and heresy, I'm sure it conjures up all kinds of images that you may know from You know, European history and stuff.

And, you know, yeah, late Middle Ages and Renaissance and stuff, there were times when heretics were burned at the stake.

A lot of this comes up during the Reformation and, you know, in persecutions between Catholics and Protestants, or even between different kinds of Protestants.

But that's not going on yet.

Heretics are not being killed because, well, not because, but I mean, the heretics are not being killed, they're being excommunicated.

To be excommunicated is to be excluded from Communion.

The ultimate punishment in the Church is to be excluded from the table of the Eucharist.

That's a big deal because it's at the table of the Eucharist that one receives the sacrament that keeps you connected to Christ.

To be excluded from the table of the Eucharist is to be excluded from salvation.

We'll get into this more, but the idea is that if you're excommunicated, you risk not only damnation, but things like you aren't going to get a decent burial.

You aren't going to get a Christian burial if you die in a state of excommunication.

So, back to the question.

Christians are being persecuted by the Roman Empire.

And in a certain sense, as long as Christians are being persecuted by the Roman Empire, that takes center stage.

Now, once Christians aren't persecuted by the Empire anymore, then they do start persecuting each other, you know, Orthodox persecuting heretics, heretics persecuting Orthodox, But still not really killing each other.

Now, every once in a while you get an angry mob that will lynch somebody.

So yes, there are those moments.

But for the most part, that's not a sanctioned thing.

You know, the burnings at the stake and that stuff comes up much later.

It's more medieval and earlier on.

Yes, question there.

With the persecution of the early church, how does that relate to the book of Revelation and what do you think John does?

Yeah, well, it's funny you should ask that, because I wrote a whole book on that.

First, I'll just preface it by saying, you know, the Book of Revelation is one of the most difficult books to interpret, and so everything I'm about to say, you will, it would be easy to find scholars who disagree with it.

So, I'll just put that out there.

My own personal view is that it, It is written, in fact, by the Apostle John in the year 95 during a persecution by the Emperor Domitian.

When you really set the biblical text side by side with the Roman history, that's where you come out.

And so it is written, it is absolutely written during a time of persecution, and it's written to a persecuted church, And the symbolism, a lot of the symbolism doesn't make sense without understanding it.

The other thing about my particular theory about the book of Revelation is that a lot of the stuff in the book of Revelation is reference to events that have already happened even before the book was written.

So there's a lot of stuff in the book of Revelation about the fall of Jerusalem.

And a lot of the apocalyptic imagery relates to the fall of Jerusalem, which was already 25 years in the past when the book was written.

But that was a watershed event for them and so the author is kind of looking back on that as well as talking about their present situation and looking forward to the future.

And so the prophecy, the future prophecy of the book of Revelation in large part hinges around this.

Hey, the Romans are being persecuted.

But God's going to win in the end, and eventually they're going to get what's coming to them.

That's kind of what it boils down to.

So the author predicts the fall of Rome.

Well, guess what?

That prediction happened.

So anyway, that's kind of my take.

If you're really interested, you can read my book on it.

But again, there are plenty of people who disagree with me.

It's called The Wedding of the Lamb, A Historical Approach to the Book of Revelation.

It's in the bookstore.

The Wedding of the Lamb.

Yes?

You talked about sort of the biblical theological base, well not necessarily the biblical frame, but the theological basis for unity and that being the whole sort of glue that holds these heretics versus orthodoxy debates together.

Were there practical political reasons for the unity of the church at that time that were also in the background going on there?

Well, I mean, I think in a practical sense, you know, there's strength in numbers.

And so, you know, In a church that is persecuted and trying to grow, you want people to be unified.

You want them to stick together.

You want a unified message in terms of preaching of the gospel.

You don't want internal divisions to embarrass the efforts at evangelization.

So there's that.

In the early days of the church, there isn't as much in terms of politics.

I mean, later on there are some issues with rival cities and stuff.

But for the most part, you've got to remember that church leadership is nobody's day job at the beginning.

Nobody's making money off this.

So if you're used to thinking about hierarchy and authority in terms of power and money, it's way too early for that.

Because that's not happening yet.

Good question, though.

Is that question back there?

No? Okay.

Let me see if there's anything else I want to say.

Actually, I think that's good.

Now, let's see what other questions or discussion you have, and then we'll go from there.

Anything I've talked about?

Yes?

Where does Gnosticism fit into, like, the Docetism that you were talking about earlier?

Yeah.

Good question, and we're going to talk about that more next week.

But, in some ways, Gnosticism is sort of Dosagism of the next generation.

So, as I said, remember, every orthodoxy is based on the orthodoxy of the previous generation.

In the same way, every heresy is based on a heresy of the previous generation.

So, as Dosagism evolves, one of the things that it evolves into is Gnosticism.

Now, there's some debate over that among scholars, you know, how soon true Gnosticism emerges.

I don't think you see true Gnosticism yet in the New Testament, but it's coming, and it sort of evolved out of Docetism as a kind of, you know, amalgam or syncretism of Docetism plus other aspects of pagan or Greco-Roman religion.

So, it's definitely coming.

We'll talk about that.

In reading the early Church Fathers, I go into it in some depth in terms of, you know, what Gnosticism was and stuff, so you'll read about that.

Since we're talking about Ignatius, and you were saying that he's writing these letters on a Catholic throne, is there a certain order we should read these letters in?

Oh, no, I wouldn't worry about that.

I suppose if you were to look into it, you could figure out what order he wrote them in, but I wouldn't worry about that for our purposes.

By the way, I will also say that with the letters of Ignatius, there's a long version and a short version.

And this happens sometimes with early documents.

I'm asking you to read the short version.

You're welcome.

Because in this case, it is probably the case that the long versions were later expansions by somebody else.

Now, there may be scholars who argue the other way around.

But the point is that I think the short versions are fine for you to read.

But if you stumble on them somewhere else, In some place other than the links I'm giving you, you might find long versions and short versions.

Read the short version.

Yes?

I mentioned that there's this need for unity among the churches.

How long, how soon did different cities start veering away from each other, and were there any particular issues that really varied city to city?

Well, what you have to understand is that There is a hierarchy of cities as well.

Certain cities emerge as having authority over other cities in their region.

And these cities that emerge as having a higher level of authority are called metropolitans.

Eventually, just when you might see cities at odds with each other, we are getting to the point where Two smaller cities might sort of have to defer to a larger city, so you have an authority then.

When you have disputes between the metropolitans, then in some cases, Rome becomes a sort of last court of appeal.

In other cases, that's disputed, and so you will see some conflict.

We're getting ahead of ourselves with that.

The fourth century is a mess, but a lot of this stuff happened in the fourth century, so we'll get there.

But we do see the development of a sort of hierarchy of cities as well.

Replace, especially in the modern church, a large emphasis on the work of the Apostle Paul in starting churches around where did he fit into the apostolic succession?

Was he equal with the other disciples, like the little Peter?

Yeah, the question is where does Paul fit into the apostolic succession?

Well, you know, there's no real hierarchy of apostles apart from the fact that Peter is sort of the head apostle.

And so with Paul, I think it's fair to say that any of the cities where there are churches that he founded, especially the biblical cities that have letters by Paul written to them, they would claim succession going back to Paul.

But he doesn't get associated with any of the metropolitans, I don't think, and certainly not Rome, even though you would think Paul might have as much claim to Rome as Peter does.

Because Paul was there, he was martyred there, etc. But he really doesn't. Peter gets wrong, and I don't think Paul gets associated with any of the other metropolitans.

But again, remember, what you have to remember is that Paul did not know Jesus personally during Jesus' ministry.

And so, in that sense, You might be able to argue that he is the last of the Apostles, or the least of the Apostles.

That would be a great research paper, but since I'm not making you write research papers in this class, you'll have to save it for later.

Yes?

Can I, to kind of join in on that, as far as religious experience, how does that play a part in, for instance, Paul was not with Jesus during his ministry, but he gets I mean, we take what he says as divine, divinely inspired.

How does that jump in there?

How can we can say Paul is divinely inspired and this person isn't? Yeah, well, that question is tied up with the development of the New Testament canon.

But if you're asking, you know, how is it that, you know, that Paul is taken as an authority without perhaps being one of these sort of, you know, primary apostles, That's a good question.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he wrote a big chunk of the New Testament, and that his writings were considered authoritative from the beginning.

It may be a bit of a chicken and egg thing, but it's hard to nail down exactly how that evolved.

Paul tells you, though, in his own writing.

Well, yes, he has the mind of Christ, right?

Any other questions?

Well, you know, not necessarily.

The question was, you know, if someone writes with a tone of authority, does that add to their authority?

You know, Ignatius can say things like, you know, well, I'm, you know, not like I'm anybody.

And there are certainly cases where an author will write a document that has a very strong tone of authority, but maybe wasn't really listened to that much.

I mean, it's almost like, you know, it seems like they're trying too hard in a sense.

It sort of begs the question, well, is anybody listening to this?

You know, it's almost like, you know, you read a document, it feels like an email that's in all caps, you know.

But yet, it's like the lie from Hamlet.

He thinks she doesn't protest too much.

It's not necessarily.

It's more about who the author is than anything else.

When we get into talking about the New Testament, you'll see that authorship is the most important criteria when it comes to authority.

Alright, well, seeing a lot of glazed over eyes, maybe we'll call it a day.

Thanks for paying attention.

Have fun with your reading in the early church.